mr. zimmerman was acquitted in the case. also with us, cnn legal analyst and former federal prosecutor sunny hostin, she used to live in baltimore. she's friends with the mayor, in case we do talk about baltimore. mr. adams, let me start out with you. you and i have talked about this before. you served on the police force here in new york. you're now borough president in brooklyn. a lot of people i talk to in baltimore said this isn't necessarily a problem of black and white, this is a problem of blue and how blue the blue line interacts in communities of color. i'm wondering what your perception, what needs to change, if anything? >> well, i agree. i recall when trayvon was killed. my colleagues and i, we wore hoods on the senate floor to symbolize that america needs to take a real look at how we are using this gun culture, number one. but number two, how our police officers are policing our communities. and i think you were right for starting out in the beginning of the program. this is not anti-public safety. i want to live in a safe environment, i want to raise my son in a safe environment. but clearly across america, we have had two methodologies of policing and using the tools of policing. in some communities when a police officer leaves the precinct or his station house, he brings out a toolbox of methods of correcting conditions. in one community he uses only the hammer. in another community he uses all the tools, conflict resolution, making sure that you are safe, that your partner is safe and the citizens are safe. that is the real problem at the heart of what's taking place in policing. >> essentially you're saying the police, police differently in an inner city community than they do in a predominantly white or well-off community? >> yes. and because the big problem was our training for the most part, we like to say in policing that we don't see color, we don't see race, we don't see gender and that is not honest and that is not true. you can't continue to have this intoxicated training method and you wake up drunk and say you don't have a drinking problem. we are intoxicated with ineffective policing in america. recognize your frailties. recognition that you come to the police department, you come from a society where race and gender plays a role in what we do. now let's train our police officers to leave that baggage behind and how to police effectively, not based on the baggage you come into a police department with. >> harry, does training need to change? >> well, training definitely needs to change. to what eric said, i was never trained to act differently in a high-crime neighborhood or low-crime neighborhood. i believe that policing is effectively the same everywhere, but in high-crime areas, all right, you have to be a little bit more aggressive because that's where police officers get shot and killed. so police officers need to protect themselves. and that's one of the main reasons. we just saw a police officer killed yesterday. >> but is that really true? in the community i grew up in, i remember policeman paul was the cop on my corner. i knew him, i talked to him, i assumed -- i always -- it was implicit that he was there for my protection. in baltimore, every person i talked to in the neighborhood where violence took place, that's a laughable notion that the police officer is there for -- they don't know policemen paul or if they do, they don't have a great impression of him. >> and that's why i've been a great proponent of having the beat cop come back. i used to be a beat cop in new jersey back in 1978 before i came to the nypd. i spent two years walking a black beat where an officer was assassinated two years earlier. i look back at that where i met all the people on the block. i got to know everybody. i virtually solved every crime on my beat. when people called 911, they would call for officer harry. right now we've got police officers just driving into a neighborhood. you know, when something bad happens, make an arrest and then getting out. that's a problem. >> eric, is it just a matter, though, of training? i remember you saying in the past stuff you learned in the academy, when you got out on the street you had veteran officers taking you aside and said forget what you learned in the academy, i'm going to show you how to be real police. >> we cannot expect police officers to -- in the sterilized police academy is different from the dirty streets. we police communities based on a numerical minority that commit crimes. when you look at all of these communities that are called high crime, yes, they have social issues and economic issues, but the overwhelming number of people, 99% of them get up every day. they may not go to wall street jobs, but they go to basic jobs. but when we go into a community, we look at the encounter that we have with that drug dealer, the encounter we had with the person who shot at a cop. now we police that entire community. >> that way. >> that way. one of the best examples, one of my rookie cops when i was a lieutenant went into a public housing development and there was urine in the elevator. he said look, all these people are disgusting. i said, no, one person pissed in the elevator. everybody in this building is upset about that. let's stop treating everyone on the building based on the behavior of the 1% in the community. that is how we police. >> and i agree. i think the bottom line is we are overly aggressively policing communities of color. when i was a prosecutor for the justice department in d.c., we had community prosecution, so i was responsible for the sixth district. i knew everyone in the neighborhood. when there was a crime committed, they would come directly to me. that is how you build confidence. but that can't be the only answer. it has to be training. i believe it also has to include body cameras, because that will lead to transparency and accountability. >> i want to zero in on that a little later on. sybrina, you went down to meet with freddie gray's family. and just be with them in their time of grief. we're going to see more of baltimore. this is not something that just because people stopped -- the few people who were committing acts of violence will stop committing acts of violence. you think we'll continue to see more cases? >> i absolutely do. i think that people are just frustrated. they're upset that it continues to happen and nobody is held accountable. and they want their voices heard. so i think that we're going to see more of baltimores, we're going to see more protests in new york and florida and california. >> you don't think it's taken seriously enough when a police officer shoots somebody? >> i think we have gotten to a place that we are so nonchalant with a death, i think it's just as if, you know -- you know, it's not taken as seriously. when it's a loss of life, i believe that it should be a thorough investigation and somebody should be held accountable. i don't think we should just move on to the next case. and that's what continues to happen. we just move on to the next case. and i think that these cases are important and i think with everything that's happening, we're getting a step closer to equal justice. >> i want to bring in pastor jamal bryant who we met in baltimore. he's the pastor of the empowerment temple church and the empowerment movement. what do you believe needs to change? >> alcoholics anonymous, the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. the first thing the criminal justice system has to do is admit there is a problem. when you look at the case with freddie gray, he is arrested and put into handcuffs, into the vehicle with no charge. so the question that's still looming is you're taking him to the precinct to do what if you've not charged him with anything? so the community has a disconnect because we knew growing up police were cops, citizens on patrol as the officer intimated that you know him, somebody from the community. over 47% of the officers in baltimore don't live in baltimore, so it's not officer paul. it's officer stranger. and so there's got to be some kind of reconnect between the police department and the community. >> i want to thank our panel. ahead we're going to dig deeper into what happens when police kill someone and whether prosecutors and juries usually give police the benefit of the doubt. look like this. feel like this. with dreamwalk insoles, turn shoes that can be a pain into comfortable ones. their soft cushioning support means you can look like this. and feel like this. dreamwalk. when you're not confident you have complete visibility into your business, it can quickly become the only thing you think about. that's where at&t can help. with innovative solutions that connect machines and people... to keep your internet of things in-sync, in real-time. leaving you free to focus on what matters most. ♪ ♪ at chase, we celebrate small businesses every day through programs like mission main street grants. last years' grant recipients are achieving amazing things. carving a name for myself and creating local jobs. creating more programs for these little bookworms. bringing a taste of louisiana to the world. at chase, we're proud to support our grant recipients, and small businesses like yours. so you can take the next big step. ♪ 800,000 hours of supercomputing time, 3 million lines of code, 40,000 sets of eyes, or a million sleepless nights. whether it's building the world's most advanced satellite, the space station, or the next leap in unmanned systems. at boeing, one thing never changes. our passion to make it real. ♪ vo: after years of being treated like she was invisible, it occurred to mindy she might actually be invisible. ♪ but mindy was actually not invisible. ooh, what are you doing? can you see me? she had just always been treated that way. yeah. you don't have to look at me like that. there are worst things than an attractive woman touching your body. i'll go. join the nation that sees you as a priority. ♪ nationwide is on your side >>> welcome back. the fact that six police officers have been criminally charged in the death of freddie gray in baltimore is remarkable because of just how rare it is for police officers to face charges when suspects die. convictions are even rarer. take a look. in south carolina where walter scott was shot in the back, killed by an officer, police have fired their weapons at 209 suspects in the past five years. only three officers have been accused of misuse of force and not one has actually been convicted. that's according to an analysis by the state newspaper. now, these numbers are hard to come by because there's no national comprehensive database that documents how many times officers shoot or kill someone. recently "the washington post" and researchers at bowling green state university analyzed police shootings nationwide. they found since 2005 only 54 officers have faced criminal charges after fatally shooting someone in the line of duty. that's out of thousands of fatal shootings by police during that period. when officers were actually charged, in 80% of those cases it involved special circumstances, like the victim was shot in the back or there was a video recording of the incident. now, of those 54 charged, just 11 officers have been convicted. legal experts will tell you that the bar to indict a police officer is extremely high and that police are often given the benefit of the doubt. joining me again, cnn legal analyst sunny hostin. also legal analyst mark geragos, criminal defense attorney, also former nypd officer dan bongino and jeffrey toobin. mark, do you believe that juries give the benefit of the doubt and prosecutors give the benefit of the doubt to police? >> absolutely, without question. police officers get the presumption of innocence whereas most criminal defendants don't have any presumption of innocence, you're swimming upstream. usually in a police prosecution, and they're few and far between, if juries are given -- if they ever make it to a jury, because usually the judge will toss the case at a preliminary hearing or a grand jury will refuse to indict, so you never even get to trial. and jurors just do not come in with any belief whatsoever that officers can commit a crime. they just don't. >> dan, do you agree with that? >> no, i don't agree at all. we have to take into account the fact that you're talking about police officers who understand that a police shooting is -- could be the end of their career like that. this isn't wild bill hickok where people go in looking for a shootout. i was in law enforcement on the federal and local side and i can tell you everyone that i know that had been involved in a shooting, it was the worst day of their life, continued to be the worst day of their life. most were civilly sued. their lives were ruined. they had nightmares about it. i had one who told me straight to my face, you know what, i took away everything that guy was ever going to have and i'll never forget that. so acting like this is a statistic that very few people are convicted given that so few want to be involved in these situations and when they do, they avoid it, i don't see anything anomalous in that at all. i'm not saying there are -- >> did you take a look at those numbers? those numbers are pretty daunting. i defy you to take those numbers and apply them to anybody else or any other group. if it's police officers who are shooting people and the only time -- look what happened in this last -- the last case. there were police reports that were written. if there was no video, that officer never would have been charged, ever would have been charged. >> you don't know that. >> in the walter scott case. >> never would have been charged. >> you don't know that. >> i know that based on 35 years of being in the criminal justice system and reading the same script that officers put for every shooting. >> you can only speculate. i know he was charged. you're trying to prove it counterfactual. >> do you remember what the police report said? do you remember how they covered for each other? did you see how they were covering evidence? did you see how they said they wrote the same script, which is he was reaching, i was in fear for my life, there was a struggle? it's a script. >> i rarely agree with mark geragos, as most people know, but he's right about this. >> you guys have made a career out of that. >> he's right about this. i think that it's very difficult to indict a police officer. i think that prosecutors who work with police officers day in and day out are loathe to indict their friends, when we know that it's very easy to indict a crime. jeff, you know that. and i think that the only answer to it is to make sure that prosecutors are not prosecuting their own, that you have an independent prosecutor. and quite frankly, that you have an independent investigation. and we need accountability for officers that do discharge their weapons because we -- >> you think there should be independent investigation in baltimore too? >> that's exactly my question. you support the state's attorney and her bringing charges in baltimore. >> well, i think that the only reason that i'm more supportive of this state's attorney in baltimore is because she said that she had independent investigators -- >> by the way, her husband is a politician in the district -- represents the district where this occurred. >> and to be sure i think those criticisms of her are fair. >> i don't think you can separate the fact that we live in an age of video. you know, of hand-held video, very easy to take video. and that's the reason why a lot of these cases have come to the fore, because there are videos. mark is right, that there -- it's very unlikely these cases would have been brought without video. but even with video, and even without a gunshot. remember eric garner in staten island, there was video and there was no gunshot there. >> and there was excessive force. >> and do you know why in eric garner's case? because you had a white prosecutor who knew how to stack the deck and go to a grand jury and not put it in front of a judge and not file that case. that was rigged from the get-go. that is -- it's a rigged system. i don't -- it's a rigged system. >> let me say this to mark. >> now you go too far. >> because i have to practice in it every day. >> so you don't believe it's a rigged system? >> i think that -- >> because a lot of people believe the system is rigged. >> prosecutors act in good faith but they also recognize the world in which they live, in which jurors are sympathetic to police because most police are good people, doing the right thing, trying to enforce the law as best they can and the aberrational cases are aberrational. >> mark, a lot of police officers when they hear you talking about this will scoff and say you'd be the first guy to call the police when you get in trouble, when you need somebody to show up at your house, you'd be -- that's who you would call and yet it's very easy to criticize -- >> i live in a community where the police are not at odds with the inhabitants of that community. that's why i'm there. that's why i raise my family there. i get that. i'm privileged. i don't deny that for a second. i also every single day am in a courthouse where all we do is process people of color for stupid drug crimes, repeatedly, and i hear the same stories from the same clients repeatedly that could not have been -- unless there's something in the ether, unless they're all drinking the same kool-aid, they could not separately come up with the same story about what police do time and time again. >> you believe that there's a script that they're reading? >> clearly there's a script. they go to police university 101. they tell them when you discharge a weapon, you've got to say that i was in fear for my life, he reached for my gun, blah, blah, blah. it's on every single police report. >> i just don't understand, what's everybody clapping about. no, no, listen. i get that. no one here on the stage, no one that has been on this stage nor i am making the case that police brutality and excessive use of force case is not a very real phenomenon, no one. but the system is rigged -- >> let me tell you why it's rigged. >> can i answer? you have a guy in tulsa shoots a guy, thinks he's going for his taser. he's now under criminal charges. you have six cops in baltimore being charged for depraved heart murder. you have another guy in south carolina. you may say he wouldn't have been charged. the facts are he was. >> they are in the minority. they are in the minority, dan. we're talking about decades and decades of police brutality and excessive force. >> let me finish my point. maybe they're in the minority because you're presuming that the overwhelming majority of cops are bad and not really good hearted decent cops doing the right thing. >> this dispute you two are having is in the absence of facts. you don't know how many police shootings there are. >> that's the problem why don't we know? >> because we don't have good records for this. >> and you know why we don't know? because the fbi does, of course, try to get some of these numbers, but guess what, they rely upon the officers to self-report. out of the 18,000 law enforcement officers -- departments all around the country, they are supposed to self-report and that's the problem, jeff. not only is that the problem. we have our police officers investigating their own and i would say nine out of ten times they say, guess what, we didn't do anything wrong. >> absolutely. >> and that's the problem. >> but it would not be that difficult to say every time police discharge a gun to have to make some sort of report. >> right. >> most police departments, certainly the nypd which i used to work with, has very elaborate rules for every time a police officer discharges their gun there has to be an investigation. >> there's the analysis that you cited which was the "washington post" article. >> we've got to take a quick break. we've got a lot more to come this hour. just ahead, killing caught on camera. the shooting of a suspect by a volunteer deputy in tulsa is just one example. he said he meant to go for his taser but accidentally grabbed his gun and killed eric harris. some have asked whether more prevalent body cameras would create more accountability on police forces and the department of justice is launching a program to help pay for them. the question is, will that help solve the problem? 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at 62,000 brush movements per minute, philips sonicare leaves your mouth with a level of clean like you've never felt before. innovation and you. philips sonicare. man: yeah, scott. i was just about to use the uh... scott: that's a bunch of ground-up paper, lad! scotts ez seed uses the finest seed, fertilizer, and natural mulch that holds water so you can grow grass anywhere! looking good, lad! man: thanks, scott. ez seed really works! so, how come haggis is so well behaved? scott: 'cause he's a scotty. man: oh. scott: get scotts ez seed. it's guaranteed. seed your lawn. seed it! >>> welcome back to this 360 special report, "police under fire." the department of justice just announced it's launching a $20 million program to provide body cameras for police officers. the attorney general, loretta lynch, calls it a vital part of giving law enforcement what they need to tackle the 21st century challenges they face. many police also say the body cameras will tell the full story during an encounter with a suspect because cell phone videos taken by bystanders only show snippets. cameras have already made a huge impact on policing. i want you to take a look. we do want to warn you some of the images you'll see are graphic. >> an officer in arizona intentionally runs over a suspect holding a rifle. a north charleston police officer shoots and kills an unarmed man in the back as he runs away. >> do you understand me? i don't understand what [ bleep ] you think you're on right now. >> a new york city detective on a furious tirade against an uber driver for honking at him. >> i don't know where you're coming from, where you think you're appropriate in doing that. that doesn't -- that's not the way it works. how long have you been in this country? >> all these incidents caught on cell phones, dash cams, body cams. in tulsa, oklahoma, a reserve deputy shoots a suspect during an undercover sting operation. >> go on your stomach. >> later saying he mistakenly pulled out his gun instead of his taser. >> i shot him, i'm sorry. >> the deputy was charged with second-degree manslaughter. whether this video helps him or hurts him remains to be seen. >> get your hands up! get your hands up! get your hands up right now! >> but often videotape allows people to see the danger police officers face on a daily basis. >> stop, stop right there! i don't want to shoot you, man. >> this body cam shows an officer in new richmond, ohio, backing away from a suspect who suddenly charges. the officer refuses to shoot. >> back up! >> even tumbling backwards at one point before the suspect surrenders. these videos have worked both for and against officers. even when the incident itself is not captured on camera. in the deaths of freddie gray in baltimore and michael brown in ferguson, only the aftermath was recorded. it was enough to lead to charges for the baltimore officers, but not in ferguson. >> there's a lot to talk about on this subject. i want to bring back eric adams, brooklyn borough president and former nypd captain. back with us also sunny hostin. again, sunny is a former federal prosecutor who used to live in baltimore and is friends with the current mayor. also with us, legal analyst mark geragos, a criminal defense attorney, and anthony scott, the brother of walter scott, who was shot in the back by a north charleston police officer. mryou have any doubt that had your brother's death not been recorded in the way it was that things would have moved so quickly? because we know the officer in his initial report gave a very different account than what we've all seen in the video. >> i definitely believe it would not have moved as fast as it did. and i think that the body cameras is the most important thing that they need to do right now, because it actually showed the whole entire thing. but it will help the people to see it's good for the victims as well as the officers because it will bring more accountability on both sides. therefore, they won't act so hastily when they take action against individuals. >> sunny, there's some police who obviously oppose body cameras but other officers will say you know what, it's actually going to show you how tough my job is. you're a supporter of body cameras. >> absolutely. and i agree, i think it also supports the police officers because it will show how difficult the job is and it
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